


A Thing with Feathers

by ReaperWriter



Series: CS AU Week [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Captain Swan AU Week, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Recovery, Terrorism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-07 00:50:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1878762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So she comes every year, and she walks through the green space, ignoring everyone and everything until it’s over and she can go back to the hollow her life has become."</p><p>Two people rocked by the same tragedy meet, and find a path forward together.</p><p>**Trigger Warning- This piece deals with a terrorist bombing and the aftermath.  May not be appropriate for all readers.  Please proceed with caution.**</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thing with Feathers

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the story I set down to write. However, my muse had other ideas. Again, this piece references a terrorist attack and the aftermath for those who experienced it. Eventually, the story comes to something like a happy ending, but it is likely not an easy read. I have further notes at the end.
> 
> Emma and company belong to Adam and Eddy.

She goes every year. It’s never something she wants, but duty compels her in a way few things can, and so she goes, and she walks through the gates, and she moves among the others there to mourn and remember and pay their respects. She does it because it’s what people expect of her, and she hates it. Hates every single minute of it.

They had been broken up, when it happened. Broken up and over and done. He had told her he didn’t love her anymore; that he was leaving, transferring to Portland and a new start without her. She hadn’t even bothered to tell him her news, when he sprung that on her. Had kept her mouth shut and told him fine, good, go, be just like everyone else in her life.

And then the bomb exploded. She should have been there that day, two desks over from his. Should have been part of the casualty count. Instead, she had been in a diner called Granny’s clear across downtown, meeting with someone with a lead on the case they are working. It was petty, going without him, not telling him about it. But at the time, it seemed a small act of revenge. One more thing to keep from him. She didn’t know it would literally kill him.

She rushed to the scene, like everyone else, and spent hours digging, digging, digging, until her unit chief, bloodied and with a bandage around his head, pulled her away and made her go home. Ordered her to stay away. They’d lost so many. Graham was gone. Johanna, the receptionist they shared with the DEA. Her friend Lizard one floor down in the Social Security Administration offices. And him.

She had lots of vacation saved up, and she took it, along with bereavement leave. Enough to cover the pregnancy and her recovery. To give herself time to make arrangements for their child to have what she hopes will be a loving home. Because she had been alone her whole life and she knew she isn’t ready to do this on her own. That she couldn’t look at their baby and explain that maybe daddy would still be there if she wasn’t being spiteful.

So she comes every year, and she walks through the green space, ignoring everyone and everything until it’s over and she can go back to the hollow her life has become.

****

It’s been a few years since he’d come. At least since the dedication, when everyone in the world seemed to have been there. After he had recovered, he couldn’t face the city anymore, and he’d asked for a transfer. A few years in Phoenix and one long winter in Salt Lake, and then ages spent in Boston. But no matter how far he’d gone, he couldn’t outrun it. Couldn’t outrun the memories or the nightmares. Those times when he woke up to the smells and the sounds and the screaming.

It had been unusual for them to assign two brothers to the same branch office, but the ATF had always been one of the more maverick branches of law enforcement. And the two of them had one of the best clearance rates in the country. It had been a good life, sharing a pair of desks and a case load. Two immigrant Irish kids made good, living their dreams. Days off spent watching the local farm league baseball team or going out on one of the area lakes. Nights drinking in that stupid cowboy bar they loved so much.

And then she’d been assigned to their office, replacing the older woman who had gone up to work with the DEA and the Secret Service. Gorgeous and dark haired and fiery. And he had fallen for her, hard. Liam didn’t completely approve, since her divorce wasn’t final, but those things had a way of dragging on and on. He loved her, and his brother, and his life. And that morning, he had a ring in his desk and dinner reservations at a place out on the lake, and life was bloody grand. And he had stepped away, walking back to the coffee set up in the corner to get a fresh cup.

And then the bomb exploded. When he came too, his left arm screamed fire, and smoke filled his nose, and the cries like banshees from his ma’s old tales split his ears. It took a minute before he realized one of the voices was his. Everything was rubble and darkness and pain. He fell in and out of consciousness more than once, waking up finally to a feeling of cold and slow and death.

And then a face, heart shaped with a halo of gold that might have been hair or God or who knew under a hard hat, her hand touching his cheek. He moaned and clawed at her with his good right arm, and her eyes…were they green? In his dreams, they were green. Her eyes went wide with alarm. “I’ve got someone alive,” she yelled. Then she turned back to him, and he felt his eyes drifting shut. “Hey, stay with me! Come on, stay with me!”

“I’ll try, love,” he gasped. And then there was darkness.

He woke in a hospital bed, his left hand a mess of pins and braces and agony. The nurses had treated him kindly but wouldn’t tell him anything when he asked for them, over and over and over. Finally, the old priest came to him, and told him. Gone. Gone, gone, gone. Liam and Milah both, and others, good men and women from their crew.   So many people he had known in other agencies.

When they finally released him, he buried his brother, or what was left of him. He couldn’t bury her, though, her estranged husband had claimed the body and had it cremated before he even woke up in the hospital. They never found the ring.

After physical therapy, he got to the point where he was capable enough to pass the qualifications to keep his job. And so he went the first year, before the city and the ghosts got to be too much. And he’d flown back for the dedication. But then he’d been gone.

Only now, he was back. Back to head the office, in the new building with fail safes and planning and wonders of engineering. Back because he knows he needs to confront his demons. Because he still has friends here that he’s missed.

And so he comes this year. And in the crowd, just ahead of him, he sees a curtain of gold hair and a face he thinks he recognizes.

****

It’s been years, and she thinks she may be coming to the end. The long dark tunnel she’s been clawing through. She reaches for her finger and pulls off the gold band, feeling the weight in her palm. She steps forward, past the guard who notes her family pass, and walks up to his space. Neal Cassidy is inscribed on the base of it, and her fingers brush over the name like they have so many times in the past. This time, she sets the ring gently above the name, and turns to walk back to the path.

And there’s a man, standing there, starring at her. She hates it when that happens. When being a family member makes her a point of interest for someone, a part of the exhibit, a zoo animal on display. She finds herself angry, angrier than she’s been in years. Striding towards him, she sticks her hands on her hips, pushing her jacket back so her badge and gun are clearly visible. “What?”

Then she notices his pass. Survivor/family. And the look in his eyes, before she catches his own badge and gun at his hip. Oh. Oh.

“I’m sorry,” he says, the lilt of an accent startling her. “It’s just. Were you there, that day? During the…” They called it a rescue and recovery, but how anyone could possibly recover… “After.”

“I…sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you.” She totally did, not realizing he was of the same fraternity, the brotherhood of the emotionally fucked. “I was, yeah. I was out of the office when…but I came back, and yeah, I was.”

He nodded, and his eyes seemed to meet hers, searching her face. “I think…Do you remember…” He paused, licking his lips just a little, and Jesus, she shouldn’t recognize how good looking he is here of all places. “I think you found me…in there.”

It’s a punch to her gut, as suddenly she sees his eyes, really sees them, and remembers the startling blue, only now his face isn’t caked with dust and flecks of blood and sweat from the shock his body was in. Automatically she looks down at his arm and sees the scars on his hand, raised almost like burns, white and pink and mottled.

Her eyes come back up to his, and he’s starring at her in a way she can’t begin to fathom. “You’re alive.”

He laughs at that, and it’s a rich sound, visceral, and she sees some old woman with a dignitary pass shooting them a dirty look at the idea of levity here. Well, fuck you very much, ma’am. “Aye, lass, I am.”

“You….sorry, you had lost a lot of blood, and when they pulled the slab off…” she stopped as he grimaced and flexed his hand. “You coded, and then they took you, and…shit.”

He hadn’t known that. It was probably somewhere in his medical records, but… “Thank you,” he began his voice a little raw. “I don’t remember much ( _lies_ ), but I remembered you. With me, telling me to stay.”

Her posture has shifted, her arms at her sides for a minute, then coming up across her chest, one hand coming up to push a strand of her hair out of her face. “I didn’t want…you shouldn’t have been alone.”

They’re both silent, now, for a long moment, then he offers his good hand. “Killian Jones.”

“Emma.” She takes it. “Emma Swan.” She looks at him. “I need to…there are a few others….”

“Me too.” He looks at their hands, still holding each other. “Together, lass?”

She shrugs, and they walk, letting go, but following each other in turn. Graham first, then Johanna. He stops at Liam Jones and his hand grips the metal for a long, long time, eyes squeezed shut, jaw clenched. Her hand finds his scarred on, and holds on until he’s ready to move. Then someone named Milah, his eyes wistful for a long time. Lizard, and she pulls the little toy gecko she got when she had gone to the zoo with her partner David and his wife and son a few weeks ago out, smiling and setting it there. A few others, names he knows, names she does.

They come out the other side, and stand there for a long moment. Finally he exhales. “Bloody hell.”

She looks at him, and their hands, joined again. “I need a drink.”

****

The area has changed in the years he’s been gone, empty warehouses and seedy taverns gone, making room for chain restaurants and large clubs, microbreweries and boutique stores. But on the back end of the district, she leads him into a pub that radiates cop bar. He asks her what she drinks, and she tells him whiskey. He waves her to a table and goes up to the bar, coming back with bottles under both arms and two rocks glasses in one hand.

She raises an eyebrow as he sets the bottle of Jack Daniels down in front of her, and the bottle of Captain Morgan across from her, then sits next to it. “I’m not on duty tomorrow,” he says, opening the bottle and pouring a healthy couple of fingers into his glass.

She half-smiles at him and grabs her own bottle, twisting it open. “Me either.” She has learned long before now to give herself a buffer between this day and her life. She pours her own healthy glug.

“To absent friends,” he says, drinking down his glass. She raised hers in salute, letting the liquor burn slow down her throat.

They sat there, in companionable silence for a while, until she found the liquid courage to ask. “Who are Liam and Milah?”

His eyes darken, reminding her of a storm over the lake on the north end of the city. He poured another large glass of rum, tipping it back and swallowing it down. “Liam was my brother. Only real family I had left. He was older than me, and I idolized him. I never imagined life without him.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and she used the pause to pour herself another drink. “Milah was…well, I loved her. She was separated, planning her divorce. And then I was going to marry her and make her mine.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, softly. “That must have been hard.”

He takes another drink of his rum. “So, love. Turn-about is fair play.”

Emma found her hands playing with the bar napkin in her hands, slowly shredding it into little pieces. It was hard to explain. “Neal and I…Neal was my husband.” She looks up and saw the sympathy in his eyes, and she feels like a horrible person. “Please, don’t look at me like that.”

“Lass,” he says, softly. She shakes head.

“Neal was leaving me.” She took a moment and poured more alcohol into her glass, chugging it down and feeling the fire of it. “I’d known him since we were barely 18. We went through police academy together, both managed to get on with the Secret Service together. Got married on a stupid weekend in Vegas. I thought he was my forever, and then one day, he tells me he doesn’t love me anymore, and he’s transferring to Portland.”

“Swan.” She brings a hand up and scrubs the tears from the edge of her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s worse than that.” She laughs, low and bitter. “It was my fault that he was even there. I went to meet a lead, didn’t tell him about it. If I wasn’t being petty and vindictive…”

His hand covers her, squeezing it. “Emma, lass, listen to me. I was getting a cup of coffee when…it was across the room, our coffee set up, and I was getting a cup. If I hadn’t gotten up just then, I would have been sitting right between Liam and Milah.” She looks up at him, watery green eyes meeting sad blue ones. “Fate’s a capricious bitch, love. She takes what she wants, no matter what we do.   You had no way to know.”

She laughs again, and this time, it’s not quite as bitter. “I swear, everything sounds more believable with an accent.”

His chuckle joined hers. “Cheers to that love.”

Hours later, the bartender calls them two cabs. They stand out front, waiting, listening to the music drifting over from the main drag. “At the risk of being forward, Agent Swan,” he says. “Since we have a unique understanding of each other, maybe we should do this again sometime.”

Just then, the cabs pull up. She looks at him, and impulsively pulls him in for a hug. “You know where to find me. Take care, Jones.”

“You too, Swan. You too.”

****

As the months went by, when one of them has a bad day, they wander into the other’s office and they spend a night drinking and talking. Soon enough, they move from just alcohol to dinner, tacos and margaritas, spaghetti and wine, barbeque and beers.

One weekend, he asks her to a ball game. A two later, she invites him to go hiking with her. One night, he takes her to that stupid cowboy bar, where he hasn’t been since that day. They wear pearl snap shirts and jeans, boots and cowboy hats, drinking long neck beers and two stepping together.

The first time he kisses her, its Labor Day weekend and they’re out on the lake, fishing. She’s just caught one, her first ever, and they laugh as he helps her get it off the hook. Leaning over to grab a beer from the cooler, he stumbles and her hands come up to steady him as their eyes meet. He leans in and gently pressed a kisses to her lips. She kisses him back, but when they pull apart, they’re clearly both a little shaken, and they don’t say anything about it.

It nearly all goes to hell in September, when he takes the place of a sick agent on what was supposed to be a routine meet with an informant that ends in a hail of bullets. His second in command, Regina, calls her. She finds him in the ER at University Medical, a concussion from where he smacked his head on the ground and two cracked ribs where his vest stopped the round aimed at his heart.

His eyes are groggy and pained when he looks up at her, and hers are full of tears. “You idiot, what the hell were you thinking?”

“Hello to you too, love,” he rasps, his hand coming up and grabbing hers. She’s shaking, and he holds her hand tight, looking at her.

“I can’t lose you too,” she whispers, folding into the chair at his bedside, her head leaning on the bed next to his.   His heart breaks a little when she adds, “I can’t do that again.”

“I’m sorry, Swan.” He doesn’t know what else to say. They both know the risks of the job. “I’ll try harder next time.

She’s the one who takes him home to the bungalow he bought when he moved back, since the doctors tell him he can’t go home alone. She gets them take out, and they eat it in near silence before, watching something on the TV. Later, he wakes gasping from the smells of smoke and dust and fire and memory, and she’s there from where she had gone to sleep in his guestroom. She crawls into the bed with him, and holds him carefully, like he’s spun glass instead of a man with broken ribs.

She kisses him in early October, on a clear, warm day at the zoo, where they have come for the birthday party of her partner’s son. Their friendship seems to have inspired a new sort of interagency spirit of socialization and he’s been over for cook outs with the Nolans’ more than once, as have some of his agents. They’ve decided to wander a bit before things get started, ended up at the exhibit with the meerkat village.

She looks at him for a long moment, then back at the little animals watching them just as intently. “Don’t take this the wrong why, but they remind me of you.”

He scoffed, and shot her a dirty look. “Swan! They do not!”

“They do to. They look…earnest, like you.” He harrumphs next to her, and she can see he’s a little annoyed. So she does the first thing that comes to mind, leaning over and resting her hand on his cheek for a second before bringing her lips to his. It’s soft and warm and he’s still for only a moment before his own hands come up, his good hand tangling in her hair while his weak left one draws her to him. They remain there for a long few minutes, exploring each other, his thumb brushing her chin, until a woman with a stroller clears her throat behind them.

Breaking the kiss, they remain in the embrace, foreheads together, his eyes searching hers. The uncertainty that was there that day on the lake was gone. “Hi,” he whispered.

“Hi.” When they moved apart, their hands find each other, clasping tightly. When they made it to the party pavilion, the Nolans notice and smile at each other.

Their first night together comes on Halloween, which they have spent on his couch watching old classic horror movies and pausing to answer the doorbell for trick-or-treaters. He lays in full sized candy bars, and she smiles as the kids’ faces light up when she gives them out. At eleven, when they have long since turned off the porch light and the last movie has run, they lay tangled in each other on the couch, and he breathes the word against her neck. “Stay.”

She looks into his eyes for a long moment, and he’s afraid she might panic and run. Then she leans forward, brushing her nose to his. “Okay.”

She gets a phone call, just before Thanksgiving, from the agency she used so long ago, that someone wants to meet her. She’s terrified, but she goes to the park, and he goes with her, staying back to let her meet the boy. It’s how they find out that she and Regina have much more in common than he could have imagined. She and the lad, Henry, talk for almost an hour, while Regina and his step-dad, Robin, keep an eye on them from the swings, where they play with Robin’s son. It’s the first meeting, but everyone agrees it certainly won’t be the last.

They spend Christmas making the rounds of the family they have found, first with the Nolans and then with Regina and her family. They end up, late in the evening, back at his place, laying curled up in the covers together. They don’t say much, but the feeling of her warm against his side fills in another hole in his heart. He hasn’t had a nightmare in two weeks, and he’s fairly certain that’s down to her.

Her lease is up at the end of January, and she is surprised when he tells her it would be crazy to renew it. She thinks about it for almost a week before she comes down by his office at lunch one day and leaves the copy of her notice to her landlord on his desk. He sneaks up to hers on his coffee break and leaves a set of keys on a chain with a silly yellow VW bug on it.

He thinks about asking her for Valentine’s Day, but that’s far too cliché. Instead, they have a quiet dinner at a little bistro he’s found, then they go for a walk near the canal. He’s carrying the ring with him, but he doesn’t ask yet.

In early March, she asks if he wants to attend this year. He thinks about it for a long time, and then tells her he does. The prospect is fraught and daunting, but he thinks it won’t be as bad. She nods when he tells her, and she puts in her request for a few days leave.

The last weekend in March, they take a road trip a state away, staying in a bed and breakfast in the mountains. Sitting bundled up on the back porch, watching the sunset; he takes her hand, and without a word, folds the ring into it. It feels hard to breathe, like when his ribs were broken, as he watches her turn it over in her fingers, the diamond catching the last rays of the sun.

Then she slips it onto her ring finger, and laces her hand into his. He leans over and kisses her, long and slow. “I love you, Emma.”

“I love you, too.”

****

It’s drizzling this year when they get there, early and before the crowds. The guard notes their passes and waves them through the gates, and they enter the green space and just walk until its time. Everything stills for the moment of silence, the rain itself seeming the cease falling. His hand is clutching hers like a lifeline, and it seems to go for an eternity before the bell tolls. This time, he’s beside her when she stops at Neal’s place, setting down the flower she brought, her eyes closing for a second.

They stop to see everyone, Graham and Johanna, Milah and Lizard, and Liam. It’s still hard, it will always be hard, but now, neither of them is alone.

They spend a few hours, and by the time the leave, the rain has cleared and the sun is shining. He squeezes her hand, gently, as they walk through the second gate. “Come, love. Let’s go home.”

****

They marry in the autumn, surrounded by friends who have become family. And life goes on.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was in the 7th grade when a Ryder truck parked outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on Oklahoma City, 2 hours west of my home in Tulsa. At 9:02, it detonated, killing 168 adults and children and injuring hundreds of others. I heard the news in my 4th hour Geography class. 
> 
> You didn't grow up in Oklahoma in the 1990s without knowing someone who lost somebody on April 19th. We observed the anniversary every year with a moment of silence wherever we were. When I was a senior, I actually took the day off school to Chaperone my sister's 8th grade class trip to the dedication of the memorial. I've been back twice since. When 9/11 happened, for most of the people I grew up with, it was our wound writ large on the whole country.
> 
> Next year will be 20 years since that horrible day, and the world has moved on to fresh horrors. However, Oklahoma remembers. And, as I hope I portrayed here, we survive and move forward. For more information on the bombing and recovery, please visit. http://www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org/
> 
> When I sat down to write a modern AU, this isn't really what I intended to write. Then the thought struck me, how would these people, who we all analyze deeply, deal with something like this. And it wouldn't let go.
> 
> This is a fictional account. I have taken liberties by placing some of those lost in the OUAT universe- Neal, Graham, Milah, Johanna, Liam, and Lizard (from Wonderland)- as those Emma and Killian lost here.


End file.
